Hope you enjoyed your Christmas! When you get a chance, can you send me the book list/articles you mentioned? My email is in the post above. No rush, just wasn’t sure if my last post got through to you (I’m still somewhat new to how blog comment communications work – do they always link to a commentors email?).

Searching for Calvin and assurance will yield many good materials. If you provide an email address, I can send you the actual PDF dissertations, sermons (including some helpful sermons by Sinclair Ferguson) and the book list that I have.

What I have found is that there are many Calvinistic/Reformed churches that are simply over-emphasizing works and fruit in the relationship to assurance and justification, but the ones I have come across are not committing the full-blown heresy of hyper-calvinism or preparationism. This over-emphasizing, I believe, stems from an unchecked legacy of the Puritans, which bore much good fruit but whose bad fruit is … VERY unhealthy!

This over-reaction is also an understandable over-reaction to the “fruits” of Finney and the epidemic of tares among the wheat that is yielding an overwhelmingly indifferent, carnal and fruitless “Christianity”.

Over-reactions always result in more error. Even the erroneous Puritan tweaks on the doctrine of assurance stemmed from an over-reaction to antinomianism and a rising belief in eternal justification, and this reaction had the unintended result of causing much despair and doubt among true Christians (some of them Giants of the faith) as the strength of one’s faith substituted a sole reliance on the Object of one’s faith.

Don’t misunderstand me, the resurgence of holiness doctrine is excellent but I fear it is reactionary and unbalanced and will lead to the same negative results as Puritanism if we don’t accurately counter-balance. The Holiness with which we see God is obtained by faith in Christ, THIS is the faith we must persevere in and we will, feebly yet sincerely, seek after righteousness… yet, we must always remember that we were saved while sinners… and so how much more now will we be saved! (Romans 5)

Can you give a list of some of the books and papers you’ve researched that helped you? I would like to look into them myself, and from your comments in this thread they seem like they would help me tremendously. I am coming out of a deeply introspective culture that has been a heavy burden to me.

Thank you.

]]>By: Wolfgang Musculushttp://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevinwax/2012/11/20/beware-the-puritan-paralysis/#comment-21806
Wed, 28 Nov 2012 21:51:02 +0000http://trevinwax.com/?p=10101#comment-21806Amen, Todd.
]]>By: Wolfgang Musculushttp://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevinwax/2012/11/20/beware-the-puritan-paralysis/#comment-21805
Wed, 28 Nov 2012 21:44:44 +0000http://trevinwax.com/?p=10101#comment-21805Are you, or any other Christian, perfect in their holiness? I would shudder if you provided any answer other than an emphatic “No!” So, how then does one begin to assess how much holiness is enough and what the holiness God requires to enter His Kingdom looks like? It looks like Christ. This “cart before the horse” scenario is the slippery slope of hyper-introspection and looking to fruits for assurance of salvation rather than to the Christ’s finished work for sinners, while sinners. (Romans 5)

The holiness that gives us access to God’s Kingdom is Christ’s holiness and it is ours by FAITH. If you read my other posts you will know that I draw the line of demarcation at antinomianism. There can be NO indifference toward sin, and a display of indifference shows that the profession and “fruits” are false… we are to pursue holiness and repent when we fail but the Puritan emphasis is a soft-sinless-perfection doctrine that is unhelpful. Again, God’s grace is too good to be true, but is… and we like to make it more “believable” by making us more responsible. No, we need to believe in reckless grace as chosen vessels and by this same grace pursue a manner of life worthy of our calling. But the focus of our perseverance should be a personal faith in the sufficiency of Christ and not in the sufficiency of our works.

We are not saved by grace through faithfulness but by grace through faith in Christ’s faithfulness.

]]>By: Seth Fullerhttp://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevinwax/2012/11/20/beware-the-puritan-paralysis/#comment-21803
Wed, 28 Nov 2012 18:32:49 +0000http://trevinwax.com/?p=10101#comment-21803“I respect DeYoung but disagree, not that we are to pursue holiness, but that “being holy as I am holy” is anything more than trusting on the holiness of Christ while avoiding the error of antinomianism.”

I shudder at the thought of your definition of holiness. I hope I am misunderstanding you.

]]>By: Todd Christensenhttp://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevinwax/2012/11/20/beware-the-puritan-paralysis/#comment-21802
Wed, 28 Nov 2012 18:19:40 +0000http://trevinwax.com/?p=10101#comment-21802Well said John. The progression downward you describe is exactly what happened to me and was a period of deep darkness for me. Thank Jesus for his amazing, unconditional grace and his work outside of us on the cross that frees us to look to him alone for our righteousness and peace!
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